[…] “It’s important to understand that the president made it very clear to the Hispanic Caucus yesterday that Congress is not acting,” Cardenas explained. “He let Speaker Boehner know many, many months ago to please go ahead and do something. He has not done it. And now’s the time for the president to act, and the president’s going to act shortly.”

“Do you know what actions the president will be taking?” a surprised Diaz-Balart asked. “I mean, the president has said to me in the past, he has said — and I’m quoting the president in the three last interviews we had — he said, ‘I’m not a king, I’m a president. There are only a few things I can do unilaterally.’”

Cardenas said the president agreed to use his “legal authority and latitude” to “give people some kind of status to the 11 million who are waiting to get some relief.”

“Not all of them,” the Democratic lawmaker explained. “The power of the president cannot relieve all 11 million. But there are categories of 500,000 or a million that he can give some kind of temporary status to.”

Cardenas added that the president promised to also expedite the hearings of the tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children stranded on the southern border, and would work to eventually provide them “some temporary or permanent status here in the United States.” […](Click here to read the rest.)

Awesome. That’s just peachy keen-o. Obama who, as the interviewer noted, acknowledged not too long ago that he did NOT have this power has now decided that, hell yes, he does, because apparently, while we weren’t looking, he made himself King. Now he thinks he can grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, and refuse to send home illegal immigrants crossing our border with impunity. Never mind that by so doing, Obama, and the Democrats who support this action, are enabling coyotes engaging in human trafficking, for all intents and purposes, as well as drug cartels. So you can see why Obama and the Hispanic Caucus are so determined to keep them here. Oh, that was sarcasm, by the way.

[…]Turley excoriated lawmakers who he believes won’t stand up for their own rights under the Constitution.

“A dominant presidency has occurred with very little congressional opposition,” he noted. “Indeed, when President Obama pledged to circumvent Congress, he received rapturous applause from the very body that he was proposing to make practically irrelevant. Now many members are contesting the right of this institution to even be heard in federal court.”

“This body is moving from self-loathing to self-destruction in a system that is in crisis,” the law professor charged. “The president’s pledge to effectively govern alone is alarming, and what is most alarming is his ability to fulfill that pledge.

When a president can govern alone, he can become a government unto himself,” he warned, “which is precisely the danger the framers sought to avoid. What we’re witnessing today is one of the greatest crises that members of this body will face.” […] (Click here to read the rest.)

I don’t think he could get much stronger than he was in his statement to Congress, do you? I mean, “self-destruction” is pretty clear and straight forward.

Professor Turley had more to say about these actions by Obama, and I urge you to watch the video below:

Unlike Prof. Turley, I DO question Obama’s motives. I absolutely question why he is doing what he is doing, and violating just about every campaign claim he made regarding Executive Orders, as discussed here recently. Regardless of Obama’s motivations, the outcome is the same, and the rest of Turley’s comments are important.

And this week also brought us a hearing on the Hill of the DOJ’s investigation of the IRS. For all you Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) lovers, check out Rep. Gowdy trying to get a straight answer from Deputy AG Cole:

No wonder Rep. Gowdy cut his hair – no doubt to make it harder to pull it out when trying to get to the bottom of this issue.

Yes, the DOJ is taking a page from the President’s playbook. From the DC:

James Cole, deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice, testified Thursday that the DOJ heard about the destruction of IRS officials’ emails in the news, even though DOJ has formally been investigating the IRS for more than a year.

“I think we learned about it after that, from press accounts,” Cole told House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan at a hearing Thursday on the DOJ’s response to the wave of computer crashes at the IRS that wiped out seven different employees’ hard drives. (RELATED: Meet The Seven IRS Employees Whose Computer Crashed). DOJ has allegedly been conducting a widely-mocked investigation into the IRS conservative targeting scandal for more than a year, and recently announced that a new investigation is underway into the IRS missing emails. […] (Click here to read the rest.)

Wow. That is just sheer and utter incompetence, if you ask me. Just stunning, and I don’t mean in a good way.

That’s about all I can take for right now. Feel free to discuss any or all of the above. This is the Weekend Open Thread.

Obama believes Congress is irrelevant and he believes he should have absolute power and control to run the government as he sees fit. If that’s not tyrannical authority, I don’t know what is. And his motivation is apparent: absolute control by the Progressives and the destruction of the GOP. Perhaps, in his mind, he and the Progressives are Hamas and the GOP is Israel, because his thinking is the same as Hamas.

The fact that Turley is 100% supportive of Obama’s policies, including Obiecare, absolutely baffles me. At least he’s supportive enough of the Constitution to put law before his ideology!

And Trey Gowdy is, as always, brilliant. I can only imagine, from watching him and Jim Jordan and Jason Chaffetz and Darrell Issa, how incredibly frustrating it is for members of this administration to refuse to obey the law, or cooperate, or hold anyone accountable, or have any respect for Congress. But, seeing has how their boss has no respect for Congress, and most of Congress itself has no respect for Congress (seeing as how they’re abdicating their power to their dear leader), how can anyone expect anything different!

Our country is being destroyed from the inside, and there’s no one who has the courage to stand up and stop it, other than Gowdy, Chaffetz, Jordan, Issa, and a few others. I’m no longer just heartbroken, I’m scared for what’s next.

That is so true, Gina – Obama does think Congress is nothing more than a speed bump to him doing whatever he wants to do. He has no respect For Congress, no respect US (since we elected them), no respect for the law, and no respect for the Constitution.

As for Turley, I know – I just cannot understand it. He seems so thoughtful and level-headed. Maybe he feels he has to say that to be taken seriously in his calling out of Obama on his shredding of the Constitution. That is all I can figure…

You are so right, sadly, Gina – it is being destroyed from the inside. Our Framers knew this could happen, hence their assertion of threats “foreign and domestic.” They were astute students of human nature. How disturbing that we are seeing so much of this behavior come to pass in our lifetimes, and so glibly accepted by these Obama sycophants/party loyalists…

That’s a great article by Rich Lowry. I think it validates the claim that Congress has allowed itself to become irrelevant by not using “…its own tools to fight such battles, especially the power of the purse and impeachment.”

Glad you liked it. I thought it was very good, including the point from the headline abt Obama making jokes abt his lawlessness. Worse was that so many people just laughed right along with him as he detailed how he was going to break the law (using lies, of course).

No kidding. I cannot believe how so many people are being taken in by this woman. I cannot believe they give her ANY credence whatsoever when, as a multimillionaire, she goes around attacking the rich and acting like she isn’t.

Then there is her getting funds she should not have gotten by claiming, based on nothing more than anecdote, that she is Cherokee. The Cherokee Nation disagrees with her, btw.

Good point, Justine, and she is just as unqualified and inexperienced as Obama. We’ve seen what that has gotten us.

I still cannot believe the same people who complained abt Bush not being qualified enough, after having been a businessman and a governor (I admit, I fell into that whole meme at the time) thought it was a good idea to hire a man for president who had so little just WORK experience, never mind anything else. Just amazing.

An article at Breitbart.com says “According to IDF officials, two of the soldiers killed had U.S. citizenship. Seven of the soldiers were killed when an anti-tank missile was reportedly fired from a house, according to Israel’s Channel 10 news.” So, once again, Hamas is using its civilians as cover to attack Israel. But of course, the only thing the media will talk about is the number of Palestinians killed. And, of course, replay the propaganda that most of them are women and children. As if Hamas ever tells the truth about ANYTHING, especially the death toll. I hope IDF wipes out every single member and supporter of Hamas.

That’s just it, Gina – it IS propaganda! As we know, Israel makes every effort to ensure there are no civilian casualties, but Hamas uses their own people as human shields. It is barbaric, and that this is supported in any way by treating them as VICTIMS is appalling.

Oh, dear abt the two IDF soldiers who are also Americans. I wonder if Obama will mention them in a sympathetic way? Yeah, I know – no chance. He and Kerry go ballistic over one young man killed, and seemingly not in a retaliatory way, but say VERY little abt the three young men kidnapped, and then killed, including a US citizen. It is beyond disturbing, this mindset.

He’s completely pro-Hamas. It’s simple. He relates to them, he sees them as heroes, as valiant freedom fighters. He won’t be happy until Islam is the law of the land…every land. He was raised Muslim and whatever it was they taught him, stuck. That’s why he’s so pro-Muslim/pro-Islam/pro-terrorist. The man is a danger to the future of this country as well as to Israel. I hope Bibi told him to f*ck off.

I have never understood, nor have I ever seen an attempt at explanation, for how Obama was able to invite members of the Muslim Brotherhood to his Cairo speech when they were an outlawed group (and are again, despite his and Clinton’s best efforts at giving them legitimacy). How is that possible?

Hamas and the MB, as you know, are part of the same group. As such, their top two tenets are to wage jihad against the Untied States and Israel. Rather than making conciliatory gestures toward them, and acting as if the use of women and children as shields is the fault of the country defending itself, we should be decrying their actions and denouncing their barbarism.